It is desirable to personalize the presentation of portable electronic appliances to distinguish one appliance from other similar appliances where they may otherwise be confused or simply to conform the presentation of an appliance to its owner's personal preference. Current mobile telephones, for example, provide options for customizing the ring tone sequence that give the user a choice of what sequence is pleasant to the user's ear, the user's style, and unique to the user's personality. The proliferation of affordable mobile handsets and services has created an enormous market opportunity for wireless entertainment and voice-based communication applications, a consumer base that is an order of magnitude larger than the personal computer user base.
Although pre-existing sequences of ring tones can be downloaded from a variety of websites, many users wish to create a unique ring tone sequence. The current applications for creating customized ring tone sequences are limited by the fact that people with musical expertise must create them and the users must have Internet access (in addition to the mobile handset).
The current methods for generating, sending, and receiving ring tone sequences involve four basic functions. The first function is the creation of the ring tone sequence. The second function is the formatting of the ring tone sequence for delivery. The third function is the delivery of the ring tone sequence to a particular handset. The fourth function is the playback of the ring tone sequence on the handset. Current methodologies are limited in the first step of the process by the lack of available options in the creation step. All methodologies must follow network protocols and standards for functions two and three for the successful completion of any custom ring tone system. Functions two and three could be collectively referred to as delivery but are distinctly different processes. The fourth function is dependent on the hardware capabilities specific to the handset from the manufacturer and country the handset is sold.
Current methods for the creation of ring tone sequences involve some level of musical expertise. The most common way to purchase a custom ring tone sequence is to have someone compose or duplicate a popular song, post the file to a commercial Web site service, preview the ring tone sequence, then purchase the selection. This is currently a very popular method, but is limited by the requirement of an Internet connection to preview the ring tone sequences. It also requires the musical expertise of someone else to generate the files.
Another common system for the creation of ring tone sequences is to key manually, in a sequence of codes and symbols, directly into the handset. Typically, these sequences are available on various Internet sites and user forums. Again, this is limited to users with an Internet connection and the diligence to find these sequences and input them properly.
A third method involves using tools available through commercial services and handset manufacturer Web sites that allow the user to generate a ring tone sequence by creating notes and sounds in a composition setting such as, a score of music. This involves even greater musical expertise because it is essentially composing songs note by note. It also involves the use of an Internet connection.
Another method of creating a ring tone is to translate recorded music into a sequence of tones. There are a number of problems that arise when attempting to translate recorded music into a ring tone sequence for an electronic device. The translation process generally requires segmentation and pitch determination. Segmentation is the process of determining the beginning and the end of a note. Prior art systems for segmenting notes in recordings of music rely on various techniques to determine note beginning points and end points. Techniques for segmenting notes include energy-based segmentation methods as disclosed in L. Rabiner and R. Schafer, “Digital Processing of Speech Signal,” Prentice Hall: 1978, pp. 120-135 and L. Rabiner and B. H. Juang, “Fundamentals of Speech Recognition,” Prentice Hall: New Jersey, 1993, pp. 143-149; voicing probability-based segmentation methods as disclosed in L. Rabiner and R. Schafer, “Digital Processing of Speech Signal,” Prentice Hall: 1978, pp. 135-139, 156, 372-373, and T. F. Quatieri, “Discrete-Time Speech Signal Processing: Principles and Practice,” Prentice Hall: New Jersey, 2002, pp. 516-519; and statistical methods based on stationarity measures or Hidden Markov models as disclosed in C. Raphael, “Automatic Segmentation of Acoustic Musical Signals Using Hidden Markov Models,” IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 21, No. 4, 1999, pp. 360-370. Once the note beginning and endpoints have been determined, the pitch of that note over the entire duration of the note must be determined. A variety of techniques for estimating the pitch of an audio signal are available, including autocorrelation techniques, cepstral techniques, wavelet techniques, and statistical techniques as disclosed in L. Rabiner and R. Schafer, “Digital Processing of Speech Signal,” Prentice Hall: 1978, pp. 135-141, 150-161, 372-378; T. F. Quatieri, “Discrete-time Speech Signal Processing,” Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 2002, pp. 504-516, and C. Raphael, “Automatic Segmentation of Acoustic Musical Signals Using Hidden Markov Models,” IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1999, pp. 360-370. Using any of these techniques, the pitch can be measured at several times throughout the duration of a note. This resulting sequence of pitch estimates may then be used to assign a single pitch (frequency) to a note, as pitch estimates vary considerably over the duration of a note. This is true of most acoustic instruments and especially the human voice, which is characterized by multiple harmonics, vibrato, aspiration, and other qualities which make the assignment of a single pitch quite difficult.
It is desirable to have a system and method for creating a unique ring tone sequence for a personal electronic device that does not require musical expertise or programming tasks.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a system and apparatus to transform an audio recording into a sequence of discrete notes and to assign to each note a duration and frequency from a set of predetermined durations and frequencies.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a system and apparatus for creating custom ring tone sequences by transforming a person's singing, or any received song that has been sung, into a ring tone sequence for delivery and use on a mobile handset.